Prague Cello Quartet

The Vlach Quartet on Naxos give well-played, impassioned accounts of both Quartets and are warmly recorded. Moreover, the account of the Violin Sonata by Jana Vlachová and František Maly is very fine, and the Pohádka for Cello and Piano is given as touching and imaginative a performance by Mikael Ericsson as any in the catalogue. –Penguin Guide

The Vlach Quartet on Naxos give well-played, impassioned accounts of both Quartets and are warmly recorded. Moreover, the account of the Violin Sonata by Jana Vlachová and František Maly is very fine, and the Pohádka for Cello and Piano is given as touching and imaginative a performance by Mikael Ericsson as any in the catalogue.

The Vlach Quartet on Naxos give well-played, impassioned accounts of both Quartets and are warmly recorded. Moreover, the account of the Violin Sonata by Jana Vlachová and František Maly is very fine, and the Pohádka for Cello and Piano is given as touching and imaginative a performance by Mikael Ericsson as any in the catalogue.

Concepts such as evolution and progress are hardly fitting when considering the history of the arts. Each period and place has its own language, which borrows from what had preceded it, paves the way for what will follow, but also rejects some elements of the past and will be partly rejected by the future. Forms and genres prized by one generation are forgotten by the following, and new styles become fashionable in place of the preceding ones. Each of them may produce – and normally does – great masterpieces, which influence in turn what will happen in the future decades.

Like so many upstart ensembles to come out of Eastern Europe, the Skampa Quartet found its beginnings while the members were students – in this case, at the Prague Academy in 1989. Only four short years later, the group gave its debut performance at London's Wigmore Hall and became the hall's artists-in-residence for the following five years. Its captivating energy and rapport with audience is frequently cited among its strengths. Whether this particular performance represents an off night for the quartet, or whether the performance really loses something when not viewed live is anyone's guess, but this live 2006 recording does not live up to its Wigmore Hall accolades.

The Hungarian-British Takács Quartet is neither Czech nor American nor German, but it conveys the three national strands of these wonderful late Dvorák works as few others have ever done. Buyers interested in these pieces have a selection of top-notch recordings from which to choose, but they are urgently directed to this one.